Six Eyecare Pros With Blogs That Make an Impact

ARTICLE BY: Carol Gilhawley
22 May 2016

Blogs
allow folks to share their thoughts and passions with
an online audience across the globe. For the 3-Os,
posts can be used to promote awareness of their
business, frame lines and causes that are important
to them. Blogging gives eyecare professionals the
flexibility to express themselves in different ways
using interesting photos or informative posts
written in a conversational style. There are so many
diverse ways to engage with an audience through
a blog on social media platforms like Facebook,
Twitter or Tumblr. More searches on Google are
now done on a mobile device than on a desktop, so
social media and blogging lend themselves very well
to an ever growing mobile audience. Here’s a look
at some of the top eye-related blogs.

This article originally appeared in the June 2016 edition of INVISION.

urbanoptics.tumblr.com

➤ Urban Optics in San Luis Obispo, CA,
might not have as large a fan base as other
blogs but it certainly is active on social media.
For the past two years, three staff at Urban
Optics have been taking pics of patients
with their new glasses and posting them on
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. “These
posts are personal,” says Michelle Lee, optician at Urban Optics. She says the entries on
Tumblr and Pinterest are more pictorial and
highlight the store’s aesthetic and the frame
lines that it carries. “We’re getting more active
on social media as time progresses,” Lee
adds. “We’re achieving an online presence
by showcasing our happy patients!”

brighteyestampa.com/blog

➤ In 2007 when very few
eye doctors had a blog, Dr.
Nathan Bonilla-Warford
set up one. “It seemed
like a good way to educate
my patients and to reach
prospective patients,” he
says. Dr. Nate shares his
blog posts on Twitter and
Facebook too.

His top three most popular
topics are:

1
Genetics behind why
children have brown eyes
or blue eyes.

2
Why a child might need
bifocals.

3
A demonstration of how
vision is blurry with different
prescriptions.

eyedolatryblog.com

➤ Friendly conversation
starters were
the idea behind Dr.
Jennifer Lyerly’s
popular eyedolatryblog
which she set up
in 2011 to communicate
with patients.
“The blog has layman-
friendly communication,
nothing
technical,” she says. “I link back to studies so
the site is well-rounded.” Eyedolatryblog gets
25,000 page views a month and Lyerly posts a
new topic directly onto the URL once a week.
“What I’m realizing is that most people are
curious about their eyes and Google topics
about their eyes,” she adds. A post about conjunctival
cyst is her most popular yet!

newgradoptometry.com and covalentcareers.com/blog

➤ The whole NewGradOptometry.com site is
effectively a blog, says Dr. Matt Geller, founder.
A core team of writers publishes one article a day
in addition to e-books, videos, infographics and
resource guides. The site gets 40,000 monthly
page views and is growing by 300 new members a
month. In the past two years, 6,000 new graduate
optometrists have joined for free.

Another blog Geller set up is CovalentCareers.
com/blog which is an online tool to help eyecare
professionals find jobs and practices find staff.
“It’s like LinkedIn for eyecare,” explains Geller.
The blog focuses exclusively on staffing and posts
tips on jobs, resumes and interviews. In its first
year, CovalentCareers.com gained 5,500 registered
users and received 10,000 visitors a month.

eyecingonthecake.blogspot.com

➤ Cupcakes inspired by eye disease
don’t sound too appealing but Dr.
Amorette Hanna manages to pull it off.
She bakes cupcakes to illustrate glaucoma
and macular degeneration and then
provides useful information to go with
them. She posts pics of her cupcakes

several times a month and patient information
about vision and eye health about
once a month. “Our time with patients
is limited so this way I can continue the
conversation with my patients,” she says.
Her Facebook page is connected to the
blog and receives on average 300 views a
month. Hanna developed the idea in optometry
school and started her “eyecing”
on the cake blog in May 2014 after her
first year in practice in Raleigh-Durham,
NC. “My dream is to open my own practice
and to build a bakery adjacent to it,”
she says. But, before she does that she
needs to build up experience working for
someone else and to pay off her student
loans. “My blog is a manifestation of
my two loves,” she adds. “It’s a creative
outlet for me. There’s not a whole lot of
ways to be creative in optometry so we
need to find other outlets where we can
be artistic.”

blog.eyeseeeuphoria.com

➤ Keeping a finger on the pulse of eyewear and fashion is Eye See Euphoria, a blog which
receives between 1,000 and 1,500 hits a day. Founded by Dr. Darryl Glover Jr. in February
2013, he typically posts two to three times a week. He says his most popular topics revolve
around fashion eyewear and interviews with independent eyewear designers. Glover is an
optometrist based out of Nigeria and North Carolina. He says his “fascination for eyewear”
began in 2002 when he was an optical sales consultant. “I fell in love with the opportunity
to style a complete stranger with eyewear that would match their personality or give them a
new image,” he explains. The site’s tagline is “state of happiness with eyewear.”